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Diamond Sports Group, the largest regional sports broadcaster, has reached a restructuring agreement with creditors in bankruptcy, with Amazon agreeing to invest in its streaming business, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Under the agreement, Amazon would provide Diamond’s local channels through Prime Video, which will become Diamond’s primary partner where viewers can purchase direct-to-consumer access to stream games of more than 40 major sports teams across the U.S., Diamond said Wednesday. Viewers will be able to stream Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League games through Prime Video. Diamond also reached a restructuring agreement supported by most of its largest creditor groups. A group of creditors have agreed to provide Diamond with a $450 million loan to finance the remaining bankruptcy proceedings and pay down debt, according to the company. Hein Park Capital Management and PGIM are among Diamond bondholders who agreed to backstop the new loan. All Diamond bondholders will have the opportunity to invest in the new loan. The agreement represents a sharp reversal of the fortunes of both Diamond and its debt investors. Diamond Sports was close to liquidating its business earlier as talks with the sports leagues hit a snag. Its creditors were divided on whether to try to revive the company. And it was mired in a legal dispute with parent company Sinclair Broadcast Group. Under the restructuring plan, the investors have also agreed to swap their debt into equity. They, along with other bondholders and Amazon, will become owners of the reorganized company.

About two-thirds of home solar installers in California are struggling to generate enough sales to operate their businesses after the state slashed incentives for customers to buy rooftop panels, a trade group said, Bloomberg News reported. The California Solar & Storage Association found that 63% of its roughly 400 members reported significant cash flow issues, Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the group, said Wednesday at the Intersolar North America conference in San Diego. Approximately 25 to 30 solar companies have either left the state or closed their business, Del Chiaro said. “We are worried about the next two months,” she said. “We think a lot more fallout may be coming.” Across the country, residential solar companies have struggled with slumping sales as higher interest rates make rooftop panels more expensive. In California, the biggest U.S. solar market, the problems are more acute after a change in regulations that scaled back the amount of money homeowners earn when they sell excess electricity to the grid. Installers are cutting jobs in the state, and bankruptcies have been mounting. Research firm Ohm Analytics, which tracks the solar marketplace, found sales dropping 67% to 85% for California’s private residential installers since the change went into effect in April.

Representatives for the owner and operator of the Tattered Cover bookstore chain have filed part of a reorganization plan for the business under the chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization process that began in October, though they asked for more time to offer more details on the plan, 9news.com reported. According to its Jan. 16 filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado, Bended Page, LLC revealed it owes more than $3.1 million to creditors in unsecured claims — among them is almost $500,000 that former CEO Kwame Spearman says is owed to him. It also lists $820,000 in secured claims owed to five lenders, including $300,000 for its board of directors, per the filings. Interim CEO Brad Dempsey, who has a promissory note of $25,000, has opted to waive his claim.

Crypto mining firm Core Scientific Inc. won court approval to exit bankruptcy and implement a restructuring plan that trims about $400 million in debt from its balance sheet and fully repays company creditors thanks largely to a turnaround in Bitcoin prices over the last year, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said yesterday that he would confirm Core Scientific’s chapter 11 exit plan, a decision that clears the firm to emerge from bankruptcy later this month. Core Scientific said during a court hearing that the company anticipates its shares will be re-listed on the Nasdaq on Jan. 24. Core Scientific filed for chapter 11 in December 2022 amid falling crypto prices and a string of major industry failures including the bankruptcies of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, crypto lender Celsius Network LLC and crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. But Core Scientific and its creditors fared far better in chapter 11 than its bankrupt peers and saw its fortunes turn thanks to higher Bitcoin prices and lower energy costs. Bitcoin was trading on Tuesday at more than $43,000 — up from about $16,800 when Core Scientific filed chapter 11 in late 2022. Core Scientific was also able to strike a series of settlements with different creditor groups, including lender B. Riley.

Enviva, the largest U.S. wood pellet exporter, is skipping a $24 million payment due to its bondholders yesterday, according to a securities filing, as it continues restructuring discussions in the wake of a disastrous bet on future pellet prices, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The company now has 30 days to make the bond payment before the failure to pay constitutes an event of default. Enviva is conducting a review of alternatives to address its capital structure and liquidity needs, the company has said. Bethesda, Md.-based Enviva said last year that it had been buying pellets and aiming to resell them for more. That strategy became perilous when pellet prices fell, leaving the company on the hook to pay $296.3 million last year for 800,000 metric tons of wood pellets that would only be worth $156.9 million on the open market, according to a securities filing. The company said at the time that it expected roughly $140 million in additional loss over the next two years based on current prices for future deliveries of pellets.

The owners of Nashville hot chicken restaurant chain Party Fowl have filed a petition seeking bankruptcy protection — noting the timing of their expansion and other factors have “started a snowball of debt,” the Nashville Post reported. Via six LLCs, Austin Smith and Nick Jacobson own Party Fowl, having begun operations in 2014 with their Gulch location at the intersection of Eighth Avenue South and Division Street. Other outposts are found in Murfreesboro, Donelson, Franklin (Cool Springs), Chattanooga and Destin, Fla. The concept has licensed presences at both Nashville International Airport and Nissan Stadium. According to a document filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, Smith and Jacobson, after opening in Cool Springs in 2020, decided to open sister businesses in Chattanooga and Destin. However, the document notes, those two locations have not generated sufficient revenue, thus creating financial stress on the owners and their other locations. COVID-19 is cited as a contributing factor. Via the LLCs, Smith and Jacobson own the six Party Fowl restaurant businesses, with chef Bart Pickens overseeing the menu of each. Smith and Jacobson intend for the six businesses to file a joint plan of reorganization prior to the chapter 11, subchapter V, filing deadline of 90 days after the petition date (Jan. 9), the court document notes.

A U.S. bankruptcy judge on Friday approved Yellow Corp's $82.9 million sale of 23 leased shipping centers to six other trucking companies, one month after the majority of the company's real estate assets sold for $1.88 billion, Reuters reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Craig Goldblatt in Wilmington, Del., approved the sale in a written order on Friday, after Yellow filed court papers indicating that no one had raised any objections to the sale. Rival trucking company Estes Express Lines was the largest buyer in Yellow's latest asset sale, picking up five leased properties for a price of $35.3 million, according to court documents. Estes previously purchased 24 properties from Yellow for $248 million, and it had offered $1.525 billion in an unsuccessful effort to buy all of Yellow's real estate. Yellow chose to break up its business rather than keeping the company intact for potential buyers. With most of its real estate assets already sold, the company is focused on a separate sale of its vehicle fleet.

The New York Department of Financial Services said Digital Currency Group subsidiary Genesis Global trading will pay an $8 million penalty and surrender its license from the regulator after an investigation found significant failings in the company's anti-money laundering and cybersecurity programs, Reuters reported. Genesis — a cryptocurrency market-maker and brokerage firm — failed to maintain an effective compliance program for anti-money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act requirements and did not file sufficient Suspicious Activity Reports, which requires financial institutions to flag certain transactions to law enforcement. “Genesis Global Trading’s failure to maintain a functional compliance program demonstrated a disregard for the Department’s regulatory requirements and exposed the company and its customers to potential threats," said NYDFS Superintendent Adrienne Harris in a statement. As part of the penalty, Genesis will give up its "BitLicense," which New York requires that cryptocurrency companies obtain to be able to offer certain services within the state. The BitLicense requires that companies comply with know-your-customer, anti-money laundering and capital requirements. Genesis has held a BitLicense since 2018.